Aspera Selected For Berlin International Film Festival

Aspera has been named as an Official Supplier for the 66th Berlin International Film Festival. It is the second consecutive year the company has been chosen for the event.

Building on the Aspera workflow utilised in 2015, Berlinale has added Aspera Orchestrator to automate and streamline its internal workflows. Integrated into their existing automated QC and distribution processes, Aspera Orchestrator analyses, validates, and manages all incoming digital packages and automatically passes them on to the primary storage in the data centre.

Aspera Shares will be used to securely handle the increased digital file sizes of 4K films playing a part in the festival's line-up this year, as the solution provides high-speed, file-based ingest of feature-length films from participants directly to Berlinale's data centre in Berlin. All films for the festival program and the European Film Market are stored as DCPs on a server, with 250 films transferred daily to the various festival cinemas.

With film files of up to 250GB each, the growing demand to ingest and share large files digitally from multiple locations across the globe has driven the need for faster transfer speeds, improved reliability, and a streamlined digital workflow. With Aspera Shares, organisers can use their full 10GB fiber connection to receive DCP files, quickly and securely regardless of distance and network conditions. By standardizing file-based film delivery on Aspera Shares, content from contributors can be easily gathered and managed.

Furthermore, Berlinale is also using Aspera Console for real-time tracking and control over transfers. Aspera Connect Server powers the architecture with the Aspera FASP protocol allowing the participants to exchange their files quickly and reliably over the wide area network.

Ove Sander, Technical Manager Digital Cinema, Berlinale, explained: "By adding Aspera Orchestrator to the successful Aspera workflow we deployed last year, not only can we continue to handle all digital cinema content, including 4K, at high speed, securely, and reliably, we're now able to automate our internal workflows. With our internal processes more efficiently managed, we're better able to meet our tight show deadlines."

Bruce Brewer, European sales director, Aspera, added: "After successfully using Aspera Shares to manage the ever-increasing file sizes at last year's festival, Berlinale has expanded its Aspera workflow to drive further efficiencies. With the introduction of Aspera Orchestrator, the festival's organizers can manage the thousands of incoming digital packages and automatically passes them on to their internal APIs, saving valuable time and resources."

www.asperasoft.com

(JP/MH)